


Set the Roof on Fire

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Series: Dark Month Collection [10]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombies, France (Country), Language Kink, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, things go wrong. But every now and then, things also get better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set the Roof on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Dark Month 2010, Day 13, for rudy_flamthrowa -- Axel/Roxas, zombies, wtf, [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBhj-Tv4WHI). This is mostly to blame on me getting sick of killing the boys off in zombie AUs. Also partially inspired by Zack carting Cloud around. Apologies, unbeta'd and very rushed.

They meet once. Just once before the world goes to hell. They meet and Roxas is nineteen and golden with a shoddy fake ID and Axel is twenty-five and already rotting on the inside. Just once, two strangers in a shady nightclub a couple blocks away from the Eiffel Tower.  
  
Just once do they stumble back to Axel's apartment, tripping over each other in broken French and English, a syllable or two of Spanish, broken down and laughing, so drunk that the world's spinning all around them- rainbow-acid bright.  
  
Just once does Axel tumble the boy back onto his bed, painting symbols and jagged pieces of forgotten languages across the kid's chest as they giggle into dirty, scratchy sheets.  
  
But it's enough, that once.  
  
Because Axel wakes to Roxas strewn half across him, drooling into that dip of collarbone he'd been so fond of the night before- foot kicked out over the edge of bed and _snoring_. Snoring even though he's got his leg hooked around Axel's thigh and is lazily grinding away against Axel's hip, completely unabashed in sleep. The sensation is enough that Axel's hard before he realizes that they'd used the last of the condoms the night before.  
  
So he kisses the boy into wakefulness, even though he smells like morning breath and sweat and stale liquor, even though they both still have dried come crusted in awkward places. He kisses him, swallows down the boy's moans and thinks _maybe this will work._  
  
Roxas is still complaining as Axel stumbles into a pair of too-small flip-flops, fumbling at the doorknob and missing twice because he's too busy blowing kisses and tossing placating endearments of _just ten minutes, ma petite chou, there's a store right around the corner_. And this kid, this beautiful kid just watches him go, fingers curled around a sheepish, affectionate smile.  
  
Axel half runs to the convenience store, the air too chilled with early morning. A biting kind of cold that makes his breath fog and his legs go over gooseflesh. When he gets to the counter, he's still rubbing sleep from his eyes, flinging a random pack down and pulling his jacket tighter around his shoulders, and perhaps that's why it takes him a second to realize the middle aged cashier is gray and sweating and kind of looks like he's about to _seriously_ kick the bucket.  
  
He opens his mouth, fingers fumbling in his pockets for a couple euro, the words on the tip of his tongue- "hey buddy, you all right?"  
  
The cashier _snarls_ \- dark blood bubbling past snapping teeth and there's a moment there where Axel is operating on instinct- _twistkickturn, avoid the teeth, watch that can of soda water- don't trip up._  
  
The birds are singing outside and the majority of his brain is still going _sexsexsexneedcondomsnowsex_ so really, he doesn't really have a firm grasp on the situation. He's tired and horny and a little bit hungover so he doesn't yet know to get his hands on a gun and plant a bullet through the skull, doesn't know to grab a crowbar or an axe, or something heavy, and just go for the head.  
  
He doesn't know. There is only time and now and the terror, so he does what he can. He runs.  
  
Now that Axel is operating on terror rather than the giddy high of imminent sex, he notices things that he hadn't before. The flower lady on the corner, always so kind to him- even offering him free roses if it looks like he has a date- is spilled out all over the pavement, entrails dripping into the street and the paper boy crouching over her has a mouth dripping with blood. The nice restaurant with the silly waitress has its windows shattered, blood smeared all across the shards of glass.  
  
It's still morning. Quiet, the sun's rays barely touching the edge of buildings, and as such, no one has really noticed. The French wake late, they say. Considering, Axel's not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.  
  
His apartment building is silent, too quiet, the floors above creaking ominously. _It's quiet enough,_ he thinks, creeping up the stairs, heart pounding double-time in his chest. _Maybe-_ he wonders, but then his eyes fall on the first shattered door, blood smeared wetly down the wall as if someone had dragged themselves along it, unable to properly hold themselves up. His heart sinks. Bile tickles the back of his throat, and he has to clamp a hand down over it when someone a couple floors up screams.  
  
He can't, he can't, maybe-  
  
213.  
  
The door's gaping open, and for a moment he hovers- unsure-  
  
Inside, someone moans. A long, drawn moan of pain, but _human_ and _Roxas_.  
  
His floor is streaked red with blood, and over the threshold to the kitchen, there's a body- one of _them_ , it's face gray and mouth smeared red, hand still outstretched towards something even though it's brain has burst open all over the floor. Beside it lies a baseball bat, the one silly little thing that had followed him over from America. The same one that his brother Zack had gotten him once, signed and everything, the curl of a stylized G wet with blood and tissues and thicker things, fragments of bone clinging to the wetness.  
  
Down the hall, a whimper.  
  
He grabs the bat as he steps carefully over the corpse, taps it carefully against the thing's skull like he's going in to bat, just in case. Dead. Well and truly dead.  
  
The bedroom is dark, sheets rucked up as if Roxas had gotten up after he left- maybe wandered into the bathroom to have a piss or down the hall to make some tea. It's untouched and he has to wait a minute, confused, before he hears it again. Ah, closet.  
  
"Roxas?" he whispers, inching steadily towards the cracked door. The whimpers stop and he's already pulling the bat up, terrified and ready- but when he flings the door open, it's just the kid. Just Roxas, terrified and shaking, crouched so low that just the tips of his bedhead curls are touching Axel's work shirts.  
  
Roxas, who flings himself out of the closet and half on top of Axel so fast that he's already pulling the bat up before he realizes that the kid's just _scared_.  
  
Outside, someone screams and a car backfires and it's like that has started everything- because now, now the world is roaring with sound. Screams and moans and the distant sound of gunfire, more car alarms. Axel's half giggling from the relief of it, near hysterical because he'd been so _worried_ -  
  
He's pulling the kid in for a hug, arms wrapping around the kid's waist- tucking his cheek up against the curve of Roxas' neck and-  
  
something wet smears there, and he pulls back- baffled.  
  
The bite isn't so much of a bite as it is a chunk torn out of the kid's shoulder. Already the wound is festering around the edges, the torn muscle and sinew- the meat of Roxas' shoulder gray and slimy, like rotten meat. It's beginning to smell too, familiar and fetid, a scent that makes him think of funeral homes and graveyards and that week he'd spent in a homeless shelter in New York where half the occupants were dying.  
  
Roxas is still sobbing against him, shaking and whimpering about _I didn't know, I thought you'd come back and forgotten your keys and I opened it and-_  
  
"Shh," he says, buries his face into the other side of the kid's neck- his fingers clenching in his own gray sweatshirt that Roxas had probably thrown on before going to answer the door.  
  
He isn't wearing pants, just that one, huge, hoodie that his small frame is practically swimming in and he looks so small like that. Scared and little, and Axel can imagine it- the thumping at the door, Roxas looking around for his clothes before noticing the hoodie, dirty and abandoned on the floor. The tap tap tap and Roxas maybe calling _coming_ down the hall as he slid into the shirt. How he'd probably laughed as he opened the door, peeking his head out, expecting Axel with a grin and a pocketful of condoms- not a monster with snapping teeth.  
  
He can see it, clear and entirely too real in the privacy of his own head- the creature shoving the door open hard enough to knock the kid down, how Roxas had probably scrambled backwards, smearing blood along the floor and looking for something, anything, as the thing bore down on him. How he'd seen the bat propped up against the hall next to the kitchen, grabbed it and _swung_ -  
  
How they'd inched backwards into the kitchen because it wasn't dying- and how he had kept hitting until the thing's head had caved in like rotten melon, how he'd scrambled down the hall and locked himself in the closet- alone in the dark with just his terror.  
  
He can see it all, so he curls close to Roxas on his dirty floor- presses kiss after kiss to the kid's tear stained face, says, "Hush, darling. Hush, mon petite, you'll be alright. Listen here, I'll sing you a crappy song, how's that sound? Awful? Yeah, I thought that might have been a bad idea."  
  
Axel pulls him into his lap, rocks him, lets the sound of car alarms and screams be drowned out by the sound of his voice until the kid goes quiet and still, just a few choked hiccoughing sobs and then silence.  
  
"I really liked you," comes the voice, hoarse and muffled into the side of Axel's neck. Gently, Axel guides him away- steers the kid's mouth up to his lips instead. Kisses him there, soft and gentle and sweet, and it isn't right that Axel won't get to find out that Roxas was in that night club just babysitting his idiot brother, that he doesn't even live in France- just visiting. It isn't fair that Roxas will never know that Axel can speak eight different languages, that he's studying linguistics at University and that he kind of wanted to teach the kid better French, because truly, his accent was _all wrong_.  
  
"I know. I liked you too," he says, smiling when he pulls away.  
  
.  
  
Things would maybe be easier if he'd chosen a different path.  
  
If he'd hotwired a quieter vehicle, or maybe if he'd been faster getting out of the building. But mostly, he thinks that things would be a lot easier if he wasn't dragging a pet zombie along with him.  
  
In the back of the van, Roxas snarls, ripping a hole into the seat cover and squirming against the ropes. His skin has taken on a greenish tinge, an ashy, bruised color all over that makes Axel wonder why the rest of them are mostly gray. Maybe it's because Roxas hasn't tasted human flesh and the rest of them has. Maybe it's just a little quirk that's _all Roxas_. Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all. Maybe it just means that there are zombies of all colors. He jerks the steering wheel a little, avoiding a horde of six or so of the creatures clustered around a fresh corpse, tugging it's intestines between their teeth and fighting over the coils like dogs. Like it's the prized piece of steak.  
  
In the back seat, Roxas whines and watches out the window until the zombies and their meal fade from view.  
  
_Can zombies starve?_ he wonders, and well, that isn't a very pleasant thought at all.  
  
.  
  
He never feeds Roxas human flesh. It's always cow or deer, maybe a stray dog or, on a bad day, the remains of a squirrel or a raccoon.  
  
Mostly, after three weeks of snarling and ripping and gnashing teeth, Roxas had gotten pretty docile. Quiet and slumped in his seat, almost like he'd fallen asleep. He still growled a bit if Axel made any sudden movement, but it had gotten to the point that he'd allow him to approach. Allow Axel to press a damp cloth to his cheeks and nose, and even, if he was very careful- his lips.  
  
Axel doesn't know what the difference is. Constant confinement? A relatively vegan diet? The fact that Axel chattered a mile a minute because he didn't have anything better to do?  
  
He doesn't know. Axel doesn't even know why he's doing this, why he's risking everything to cart around the corpse of what should have been, for all intents and purposes, a one-night stand. He doesn't know why he feels content around Roxas, even when the kid is snarling and trying to take chunks out of his body. He doesn't know where he's heading or why he's even trying anymore, just knows that he needs to go North.  
  
But at this point in time, the world has fallen to shambles and he's encountered exactly five living humans since leaving Paris. So he figures that it really doesn't matter much, because he doesn't understand anything.  
  
.  
  
Of course, the real change comes when Axel crashes the van into an old worn barn a mile after crossing into Belarus- sending himself through the windshield and giving the zombies a way in after him. There had been clear roads for as far as the eye could see, and he'd looked back to check on Roxas for one second, and then he'd started plowing into them, one after another, like they were getting smarter. Like they were starting to _really_ hunt in packs.  
  
Those minutes last forever. Axel lands all wrong, arm twisted under him and _snap_ \- Then they're on him, snarling and biting. He kicks and yells and thanks god that he'd picked up that Kevlar vest a couple towns back, because the first bite rips into the padding of his shoulder and he doesn't feel a thing.  
  
Time feels slowed, sluggish, and he thinks with perfect clarity, _I am going to die._  
  
It takes him a second to realize that the commotion isn't the creatures fighting amongst themselves for him but something fighting it's way forwards, and then Roxas tears a farmer's throat out with his teeth, coming to a crouch before Axel and _snarling_ -  
  
He fights like he's protecting something, back to Axel, never letting anything too close and after an indiscernible amount of time, they're dead, or gone, or twitching to a slow (true) death at their feet. Axel is left gaping up at Roxas, who is now kneeling before him- milky eyes unfocused and blood drying against his cheek.  
  
The straw is scratchy beneath him and blood is dripping from Roxas' upper lip and onto his face, slowly, one- two- three- he can counts the beats. And then Roxas turns back, away, and crawls back into the van.  
  
.  
  
Axel meets a group of people near St. Petersburg, a trio of chemists who are working on a cure and seem exceptionably intrigued by Roxas.  
  
It's a small building, high ground and fenced in. A fortress, really. Three chemists and three big, brawny bodyguards.  
  
For days they both eat unnervingly well. Xehanort says they want the best for Roxas, and after Axel refuses to allow him human flesh, he's fed a diet of fresh cattle and plucked hens- pork and veal and anything really. It's better than the supply of road kill he'd gotten before, at least, Axel reasons.  
  
The days pass, weeks, and months, and Axel gets to know the others- the older hippyish guard who likes to take chances and who shows Axel how to properly shoot a gun, the quiet one who trails after the youngest scientist like a lovestruck puppy, and the angry one with the ridiculous sideburns.  
  
They've been camped out here for months, they tell him. They get the zombies down to Xehanort and the others and try to ignore the snarls. Most of the time they're camped out atop the fence, smoking cigarettes and trying to rub the feeling back into their fingers. Winter is coming and it's showing. The zombies don't like the cold that freezes their joints or the brittle, frozen flesh of what kills they do find.  
  
Then the day comes that Axel pokes his head in during one of the experiments.  
  
The zombie in question is pale, bruises over bruises and still snarling- craning it's head up in a vain attempt to reach Xehanort's arm. Powder blue hair and a scar that was probably obtained before he was bitten. His chest is cracked open down the middle, rib cage carefully sawed and pried apart- gaping and horrific. From where he's standing, Axel can see it's heart- gray and clotted, completely still in its chest.  
  
Xehanort looks up and smiles at him. Invites him closer- beckoning with one hand and still slicing slivers of gray flesh with the other.  
  
The scientist pauses, injects something directly into the heart.  
  
Axel watches, stunned, as it starts to beat. Color returns, and Xehanort scrambles to close the patient back up. "It's a virus," he explains as he goes, "simple enough- it attacks the foreign cells, eliminates them and returns the blood cells to normal."  
  
"The only problem is that we can never close them fast enough."  
  
A snip of thread and the zombie- the man- takes a great gasping breath and jolts up.  
  
Xehanort grins.  
  
"Until now."  
  
.  
  
"Roxas," he breathes.  
  
Blue eyes open. A smile curls across healthy, pink lips.  
  
"Axel," the boy grins.  
  
.  
  
Of course, there's the whole nasty business that the good doctors didn't know when to stop. That they pushed the cure, kept pushing until the strain mutated- made things worse. That they started experimenting on themselves and on the humans that they'd brought back.  
  
There's all that nasty business to consider. The mutations and the spilled blood and the screaming bodyguards. There is all that, yes, but there is also Roxas. Safe and sound human Roxas, cured before the experiments got too out of control. Sarcastic, gorgeous, wonderful Roxas; who turns out is really rather good with a gun and even better with a chain saw.  
  
Wonderful Roxas who just grins and hefts his crowbar over his shoulder when Axel steals a trunk full of loaded syringes, brandishes a couple gallons of gasoline and a good old fashioned zippo and says, "We're gonna burn this motherfucker down."  
  
Roxas, whose hand fits perfectly in his and watches the flames rise around the place that, for eight months, they called home and asks, "Well shit, now what are we gonna do?"  
  
They'll figure something out.


End file.
